DOMESTICATED

Richard Francis’Domesticated is the amazing story of how certain ancient animals chose to live near humans, thus sealing their future evolutionary fate.

How did the deadly wolf evolve into the lap-loving Pekingese, the wildcat into the tabby cat, and the awe-inspiring auroch into the meek milk-producing cow? It happened through the process that biologists call “domestication.” Domesticated creatures have served us well. In fact, without them, civilization as we know it would not exist. A natural storyteller, Francis weaves history, archeology, and anthropology to create a fascinating narrative, while seamlessly integrating the most cutting edge ideas in 21st-century biology, from genomics to evo-devo. Each domesticated species is a case study in evolution. Two key themes emerge: that domestication often results in the retention of juvenile traits; and that, for all of the spectacular alterations wrought by natural and artificial selection, evolution remains fundamentally a conservative process—the Pekingese, for example, retains ample evidence of its wolf ancestry. In the final chapters, Francis explores the ways in which these themes apply to human evolution. Richard C. Francis is a science journalist with a PhD in neurobiology from Stony Brook University. He is the author of the acclaimed book Epigenetics. He and his wife (and cat) live in Brooklyn, New York.